September222019

«Islam has had followers in China for centuries. There are now 22 to 23 million Muslims, a tiny minority in a country of 1.4 billion. Among them, the Hui and the Uighurs make up the largest ethnic groups. Uighurs primarily live in Xinjiang, but the Hui live in enclaves scattered around the nation.

The restrictions they now face can be traced to 2015, when Mr. Xi first raised the issue of what he called the “Sinicization of Islam,” saying all faiths should be subordinate to Chinese culture and the Communist Party. Last year, Mr. Xi’s government issued a confidential directive that ordered local officials to prevent Islam from interfering with secular life and the state’s functions.

Critics of China’s policies who are outside the country provided excerpts from the directive to The Times. The directive, titled “Reinforcing and Improving Islam Work in the New Situation,” has not been made public. It was issued by the State Council, China’s cabinet, in April of last year and classified as confidential for 20 years.

The directive warns against the “Arabization” of Islamic places, fashions and rituals in China, singling out the influence of Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, as a cause for concern.

It prohibits the use of the Islamic financial system. It bars mosques or other private Islamic organizations from organizing kindergartens or after-school programs, and it forbids Arabic-language schools to teach religion or send students abroad to study.

The most visible aspect of the crackdown has been the targeting of mosques built with domes, minarets and other architectural details characteristic of Central Asia or the Arabic world.

Taken in isolation, some of these measures seem limited. Others seem capricious: some mosques with Arabic features have been left untouched, while others nearby have been altered or shut down.

But on a national scale, the trend is clear. Mr. Cui, the poet, calls it the harshest campaign against faith since the end of the Cultural Revolution, when so-called Red Guards unleashed by Mao Zedong destroyed mosques across the country.»

«In an interview, Mr. Ma, the Frostburg State scholar, said the current leadership viewed religion as “the major enemy the state faces.” He said senior officials had studied the role played by faith — particularly the Catholic Church in Poland — in the collapse of the Soviet Union and its dominion in Eastern Europe.»

September192019

«China has blamed violent attacks in Xinjiang in recent years on Islamist extremists bent on waging holy war on the state, with radical ideas said to be coming from abroad over the Internet and from visits to foreign countries by Uighurs, the region’s predominant ethnic group.

In response, Beijing has turned the entire region into a 21st-century surveillance state, with ubiquitous checkpoints and widespread use of facial recognition technology, and has even forced Muslims to install spyware on their phones that allows the authorities to monitor their activity online, experts say. Long beards and veils have been banned, and overt expression of religious sentiment is likely to cause immediate suspicion.

In an extension of the already pervasive program of human surveillance, more than 1 million Communist Party cadres have been dispatched to spend days on end staying in the homes of families — most of them Muslim — throughout Xinjiang, according to a report by Human Rights Watch released this week. There, they carry out political indoctrination and report back on anything from the extent of religious beliefs to uncleanliness and alcoholism.»

«Activists and U.S. politicians meanwhile called for greater world attention to and condemnation of China’s network of political “re-education camps” that have held up to 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities accused of harboring “strong religious views”
and “politically incorrect” ideas since April 2017 as reported by Radio Free Asia.

Authorities in Xinjiang have typically forced restaurants to stay open and restricted access to mosques during Ramadan to discourage traditional observation of the holy month, and in recent years authorities’ have tried to ban fasting among Uyghurs, drawing widespread criticism from rights groups.

“The entire Muslim world has started fasting and praying. But unfortunately the Uyghur Muslims under China’s draconian rule can neither fast nor pray during this Ramadan,” said Ilshat Hassan, president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association.

“It is not just Uyghurs’ Islamic faith that is under
Chinese attack but also their very existence as a unique indigenous people,” he told RFA’s Uyghur Service.

“The international community needs to take action for China locking up millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps. And the Muslim world, especially OIC, should hold China accountable for its anti-Islamic policy and crimes against humanity,” added Hassan.»

«The sheer scale of the internment camp system, which according to The Wall Street Journalhas doubled in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region just within the last year, is mindboggling. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China describes it as “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” Beijing began by targeting Uighur extremists, but now even benign manifestations of Muslim identity—like growing a long beard—can get a Uighur sent to a camp, the Journalnoted. Earlier this month, when a UN panel confronted a senior Chinese official about the camps, he said there are “no such things as reeducation centers,” even though government documents refer to the facilities that way. Instead, he claimed they’re just vocational schools for criminals.

China has been selling a very different narrative to its own population. Although the authorities frequently describe the internment camps as schools, they also liken them to another type of institution: hospitals. Here’s an excerpt from an official Communist Party audio recording, which was transmitted last year to Uighurs via WeChat, a social-media platform, and which was transcribed and translated by Radio Free Asia:

Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient. … The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people. … If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumor.

“Religious belief is seen as a pathology” in China, explained James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University, adding that Beijing often claims religion fuels extremism and separatism. “So now they’re calling reeducation camps ‘hospitals’ meant to cure thinking. It’s like an inoculation, a search-and-destroy medical procedure that they want to apply to the whole Uighur population, to kill the germs of extremism. But it’s not just giving someone a shot—it’s locking them up for months in bad conditions.”»

March202018

His view, in my interpretation: a real, devout Muslim would avoid homosexuality and be an exemplary husband over his wife in accordance with the teachings of the Quran. The root cause of the Orlando Shootings isn’t Islam, but lack of Islamic self-discipline against homosexuality and domestic violence. Am I wrong?

I’m often surprised at Muslim people’s lack of sensitivity on gender-related issues such as LGBTQ rights, when I hear their arguments against Islamophobia. I agree in general with the view of the speaker in the above YouTube video, but using homophobia to refute Islamophobia is rather disturbing for me.

November162017

August022017

July162017

February122015

“it really scares me how aggressive people can be about disliking islam, muslims, hijab etc. I’ve seen people get red in the face angry because I wouldn’t take my hijab off. All of this is real and muslim women have to deal with this sometimes daily esp sisters in the south”

“Meanwhile on Fox News: Refusal to call the Chapel Hill shootings a hate crime, but no hesitation to label every crime committed by a Muslim a terrorist. No hesitation to say all women in a hijab should be jailed. No hesitation to spew hate against Islam every chance they get.” — shitrichcollegekidssay

January142014

A growing number of British Muslim children have reported facing racist and xenophobic bullying in their schools, a UK charity group revealed, warning that far-right agenda on immigration was being taken into classrooms.

“There’s so much more of a focus in the news at the moment about immigrants… it’s a real discussion topic and children aren’t immune to the conversations that happen around them,” Sue Minto, head of ChildLine, told The Independent on Wednesday, December 8.

“Some children are being told, even if they’re UK born, to pack your bags and go back where you belong. It is very worrying, it’s a big increase. This past year, it really seems to be something children and young people are suffering with.” ...

September012013

French girl attempts suicide after ‘veil attack’

A 16-year-old girl, who filed charges against a pair of skinheads for what she said was an Islamophobic attack on August 12, attempted to commit suicide on Monday by jumping from a window in her apartment block.

According to a police report, the girl was assaulted on August 13 in the troubled town of Trappes, 35 kilometres west of Paris. Two men with shaved heads approached the Muslim girl with a “sharp object,” ripped off her headscarf, shouted Islamphobic insults and hit her on the shoulder before fleeing by car, a judicial source told French media.

The girl made a first attempt to take her life on August 23 by ingesting a dangerously-high quantity of medicated drugs, police said.

After jumping from a window on the fourth floor of her apartment building on Monday evening she was said to be “seriously injured” but still conscious when taken to hospital by paramedics. She was then transferred to a hospital in Paris during the night. Local authorities described her condition as “worrying”.

The reporter of Islamophobia Today added: “I am very concerned about Aissatou’s mental and spiritual well-being, she was clearly traumatized by her experience and the backlash she has encountered from French authorities. The French Islamophobia watch-dog group ‘Collectif Contre L’Islamophobie’ has reported that she was harassed by police authorities.”

January312013

September082010

“In comments broadcast on CNN, Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Centre, said it would be ‘tragic’ if anybody's life was lost as a result of the planned Quran burning. But he said: ‘Still, I must say that we feel that we must sooner or later stand up to Islam, and if we don't, it's not going to go away.’”